Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
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Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
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Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#2I get the gist of how Minecraft is constructed: just a bunch of blocks with algorithms which hide certain blocks when they aren't in the player's view.
Are there any articles about how an engine like this is built? It is an extreme level of procedural generation (apparently), but the graphics aren't blocky and as abstract, but rather pretty impressive.
In a similar vein is Eskil Steenberg's Love [1], but this is on another level entirely.
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#3Disappointing article. There's no discussion of the algorithms the game uses to generate content.
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#4Looks like it could be a good game either way, but I'm questioning their use of words when they say "every atom" is procedurally-generated, as in their first reveal trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fCn8oB-sg
From what they have demoed, they have not proven that anything actually is being generated. My best guess is that they randomly vary colors and textures (and generate the atmospheres, as they say), and randomly place models about the planet, which is a far cry from actually generating all of the models and animation for everything. A lot of it just looks modeled by an artist (and they do have an artist on their team). Anyhow, I don't think this will necessarily detract from the game, just a nitpick on choice of words...
An additional concern is how quickly this game came out of nowhere (I think?). The Inovae (formerly Infinity) engine took many years to develop - it was one of the first of its sort to allow seamless planet to space transitions with tons of terrain detail. If you look in close detail at the differences between the two, you can tell that No Man's sky does not have a very good sense of scale when flying into a planet (unless the planet were incredibly tiny). Also, note the angle of the fly-in is straight on; its much harder to prevent detail popping when flying in tangentially to the planet and I wonder if they have yet addressed this. Again, just another nitpick. :)
No Man's Sky (2:00 in for the planet fly in): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtmEjqzg7M
Inovae/Infinity: http://www.inovaestudios.com and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#5I get the gist of how Minecraft is constructed: just a bunch of blocks with algorithms which hide certain blocks when they aren't in the player's view. Are there any articles about how an engine like this is built? It is an extreme level of procedural generation (apparently), but the graphics aren't blocky and as abstract, but rather pretty impressive. In a similar vein is Eskil Steenberg's Love [1], but this is on a…
Sounds like it's quite the artful balance between procedurally generated and manually curated content.
A bit (but just a little) more information can be found here: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/06/25/crafting-the-endless-...
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#6I get the gist of how Minecraft is constructed: just a bunch of blocks with algorithms which hide certain blocks when they aren't in the player's view. Are there any articles about how an engine like this is built? It is an extreme level of procedural generation (apparently), but the graphics aren't blocky and as abstract, but rather pretty impressive. In a similar vein is Eskil Steenberg's Love [1], but this is on a…
I am working on a full procedural generation engine (not like minecraft, but it does use voxels at a much higher resolution). Wrote up an overview of how it works, if you are interested:
http://www.voxelquest.com/news/how-does-it-work
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#7Disappointing article. There's no discussion of the algorithms the game uses to generate content.
Without trying to be too critical, it's strange hearing the term "algorithm" get a lot of use nowadays. Example: this BBC article fom 2011 about "When algorithms control the world", with phrases like http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-14306146
I suppose it's the natural evolution after "programs" and "apps" became mundane things and data science became more prominent, but the way these articles talk about them with no detail makes me think that they might as well describe algorithms as some mysterious fairy-like substance that causes magical things to happen.
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#8Holy shit, I guess I'm getting a PS4.
I suspect--or hope, at least--that they've built meshes that can be combined in a myriad of ways, so by combining the hundreds or thousands of combinations you can get millions of animal or plant types.
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#9I get the gist of how Minecraft is constructed: just a bunch of blocks with algorithms which hide certain blocks when they aren't in the player's view. Are there any articles about how an engine like this is built? It is an extreme level of procedural generation (apparently), but the graphics aren't blocky and as abstract, but rather pretty impressive. In a similar vein is Eskil Steenberg's Love [1], but this is on a…
As someone who's tried to make a simple version of minecraft as a hobby project I think I can shed some light.
At its core, procedural engines are built on generating different kinds of noise and then filtering and combining them to produce the types of values that you want.
The values you are looking for depend on how you model the different elements of your world.
As an example, in my game I wanted to generate regions consisting of different types of terrain. I ended up using voronoi noise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram) to split the terrain into regions and then used the cell value as a multiplier for how bumpy the terrain was. The bumpy terrain was generated from smoothing regular white noise. The amount of smoothing was random too so you could have smooth hills or jagged mountains.
As you can see, you can kinda go wild with it.
Re: Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms
#10Disappointing article. There's no discussion of the algorithms the game uses to generate content.
Without trying to be too critical, it's strange hearing the term "algorithm" get a lot of use nowadays. Example: this BBC article fom 2011 about "When algorithms control the world", with phrases like http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-14306146 I suppose it's the natural evolution after "programs" and "apps" became mundane things and data science became more prominent, but the way these articles talk about them with n…
Hopefully this isn't too spoilerish, but this reminds me of the scene in Transformers 4 where that one guy screams, "Algorithms! ... Math!" :P